I won a book on goodreads in a kind of preview review type deal. The book was The Spiders of Allah by James Hider. It's not a "big book" but I did get it through bookly means in an envelope from St. Martin's Press. Here's a review I posted on the site in hopes I'll be eligible to win more books I won't really like:
I entered the giveaway for the book mainly because of I thought the cover art was by Ralph Steadman. I was completely wrong.
When I re-read the synopsis of the book after winning I thought I'd be getting a non-fiction book that would add some religious and historical context to middle eastern conflicts. I was mostly wrong.
I enjoyed the two chapters that discussed the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and some of the religious history behind it. Then the book takes a nearly 200 pg diversion into Iraq, largely ignoring religion (aside from occasional Sunni/Shiite tidbits), in favor of the standard Iraq war stuff of Saddam brutality, military embeds, translator fixers, and the general extreme-journo bravado that pops up a lot with Iraq War correspondents (I'm looking at you Lara Logan). I wasn't really interested for the same reasons I stopped watching Generation Kill after two episodes. I have information overload connected to the Iraq War. Sorry dude. Too late.
The book was ok, and it was free, but ultimately couldn't escape the "gonzo" cloud that it was branded with. Too often "new gonzo" authors (ahem, Matt Taibbi) come off as imitators rather than followers. I should probably learn to avoid books labeled this way and more generally continue to avoid war non-fiction.
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